The ‘West Hunter’ anthropo-weblog of Cochran and Harpending apparently intends exciting reading ‘against the grain’ on intelligence, race and culture. Hence, I was aghast to recognize group thinking rather than truly independent innovation. I didn’t expect nourished ‘truths’ to skew their views and incite the exclamation of unsupported claims. This practice exactly induces the circularity of Kurganist views on the origin of Indo-European languages that center on Yamnaya horse riders from the Pontic-Caspian region, ie. Ukraine. Since apparently this hypothesis was hailed as the politically correct version of the Nazi pet hypothesis that instead centered on the archeological Corded Ware horizon between Rhine and Volga, proponents of many academic circles thrive on the notion that any argument against may be discounted as suspicious. But what’s the pressure worth to defend an alternative truth when this inspires to utter a statement as this: ‘Blond hair maps pretty well into Corded Ware territory, which suggests that it came in with the Yamnaya.’ (Cochran in ‘Faster than Fisher’, 22-11-2014)? Besides being unsupported by the current data, this fabrication of would-be facts is actually part of a larger circularity that totally depends on the same old gut feelings.

Without the intention to harm their fundraising plea for a ‘tax-deductible contributions to their blog’, I’d bet they wouldn’t get a coin if the authors weren’t such a Kurganists. Corded Ware that got their blond hair from Yamnaya, certainly a bold statement and maybe even worse than it looks. I urged him please to read Mallory himself, since Yamnaya and Corded Ware really were two different cultures:

‘Lothar Kilian isolated twenty-three diagnostic features. He argued that the Corded Ware burials possessed a series of traits not found in the Pontic-Caspian – amphorae, cord-decorated beakers, battle-axes – which are the essential markers of the Corded Ware culture. In contrast, the steppe burials utilized egg-shaped pottery, hammer-head pins, ochre and a variety of burial postures unknown in the Corded Ware horizon. While there may be some generic similarities, Kilian concluded that the specific differences do not support an historical connection between the two regions.’ (Mallory, 1989)

Nobel Ashraf
Bible says days and nights were created before earth and sun. Earth was created before sun. Moon has its own light. Bible is unscientific.﻿

Chris Carlascio
„Bible says days and nights were created before earth and sun. Earth was created before sun.”

God doesn’t need to have a sun before light can exist. It’s a well known idea in the Bible. It talks about the same kind of thing in the future:

„The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.” (Rev. 21:23)

„And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” (Rev. 22:5)

This unusual, counter-intuitive order of creation (light before sun) actually adds a hallmark of authenticity. If the Bible had been the product of later ‘editors’, as alleged by the Wellhausen school (‘Documentary Hypothesis’), they would surely have modified this to fit with their own understanding. Having ‘day’ without the sun would have been generally inconceivable to the ancients.

John Calvin wrote:
„Therefore the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and the moon.” – Calvin, J., Genesis, 1554; Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, UK, 1984, p. 76-77.

Concerning the creation of the sun, he writes:
„God had before created the light, but he now institutes a new order in nature, that the sun should be the dispenser of diurnal light, and the moon and the stars should shine by night. And he assigns them to this office, to teach us that all creatures are subject to his will, and execute what he enjoins upon them. For Moses relates nothing else than that God ordained certain instruments to diffuse through the earth, by reciprocal changes, that light which had been previously created. The only difference is this, that the light was before dispersed, but now proceeds from lucid bodies; which, in serving this purpose, obey the commands of God.” – Calvin, J., Genesis, 1554; Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, UK, 1984, p. 83.

Having the sun appear after the light would have been very significant to pagan worldviews which tended to worship the sun as the source of all life. God seems to be making it pointedly clear that the sun is secondary to Himself as the source of everything. He doesn’t ‘need’ the sun in order to create life, in contrast to old-Earth beliefs.

In fact, early church writers used the literal fourth day creation of the sun as a polemic against paganism. For example, in the second century, Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, wrote in an apologetic work to the learned pagan magistrate Autolycus:

„On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on earth come from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before the stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it.” – Theophilus, To Autolycus 2:15, AD 181, Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:100.

In the 4th century, Basil the Great commented on the same passage:
„Heaven and earth were the first; after them was created light; the day had been distinguished from the night, then had appeared the firmament and the dry element. The water had been gathered into the reservoir assigned to it, the earth displayed its productions, it had caused many kinds of herbs to germinate and it was adorned with all kinds of plants. However, the sun and the moon did not yet exist, in order that those who live in ignorance of God may not consider the sun as the origin and the father of light, or as the maker of all that grows out of the earth. That is why there was a fourth day, and then God said: ‚Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven.’ ” – Basil, Hexaëmeron 6:2;

„Moon has its own light. Bible is unscientific.”

The word for light isn’t that restrictive. To us, the moon does give light upon the Earth. The fact that it does so by reflection rather than emission is not relevant to the biblical passage. The Hebrew word used for emit/give light in this verse (‚owr) can mean both “to be or become light” and “to be illuminated or become lighted up” (Strong’s 0215).

The same word is used in Proverbs 29:13 (“The poor man and the oppressor meet together; the LORD gives light to the eyes of both”). The light here also implies reflection from another source (i.e., God).

To demonstrate this word picture, imagine that someone uses a mirror to reflect light in your eyes. The ultimate source of the light is not the mirror, but the mirror appears bright to you because you’re on the receiving end of the reflection.

Ultimately, the Bible does not say that the moon emits light. Only that it is to give light upon the Earth—which it does by reflection. The moon reflects the sun’s light on to us even when the sun is on the other side of the earth. The amount of reflected light depends on the moon’s surface area, so we are fortunate to have a moon that is so large.﻿

Nobel Ashraf
if no earth then there no day or night. if there is no sun there is no day or night. go back to school!﻿

Chris Carlascio
Are you twelve? Did your school forget to teach you about capitalizing the first word of your sentences?

1. Earth was there from the first day.

2. You don’t need the sun to have day or night. You just need earth rotating in front of light.

God doesn’t need to have a sun before light can exist. It’s a well known idea in the Bible. It talks about the same kind of thing in the future:

„The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.” (Rev. 21:23)

„And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” (Rev. 22:5)

This unusual, counter-intuitive order of creation (light before sun) actually adds a hallmark of authenticity. If the Bible had been the product of later ‘editors’, as alleged by the Wellhausen school (‘Documentary Hypothesis’), they would surely have modified this to fit with their own understanding. Having ‘day’ without the sun would have been generally inconceivable to the ancients.

John Calvin wrote:
„Therefore the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and the moon.” – Calvin, J., Genesis, 1554; Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, UK, 1984, p. 76-77.

Concerning the creation of the sun, he writes:
„God had before created the light, but he now institutes a new order in nature, that the sun should be the dispenser of diurnal light, and the moon and the stars should shine by night. And he assigns them to this office, to teach us that all creatures are subject to his will, and execute what he enjoins upon them. For Moses relates nothing else than that God ordained certain instruments to diffuse through the earth, by reciprocal changes, that light which had been previously created. The only difference is this, that the light was before dispersed, but now proceeds from lucid bodies; which, in serving this purpose, obey the commands of God.” – Calvin, J., Genesis, 1554; Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, UK, 1984, p. 83.

Having the sun appear after the light would have been very significant to pagan worldviews which tended to worship the sun as the source of all life. God seems to be making it pointedly clear that the sun is secondary to Himself as the source of everything. He doesn’t ‘need’ the sun in order to create life, in contrast to old-Earth beliefs.

In fact, early church writers used the literal fourth day creation of the sun as a polemic against paganism. For example, in the second century, Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, wrote in an apologetic work to the learned pagan magistrate Autolycus:
„On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on earth come from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before the stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it.” – Theophilus, To Autolycus 2:15, AD 181, Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:100.

In the 4th century, Basil the Great commented on the same passage:
„Heaven and earth were the first; after them was created light; the day had been distinguished from the night, then had appeared the firmament and the dry element. The water had been gathered into the reservoir assigned to it, the earth displayed its productions, it had caused many kinds of herbs to germinate and it was adorned with all kinds of plants. However, the sun and the moon did not yet exist, in order that those who live in ignorance of God may not consider the sun as the origin and the father of light, or as the maker of all that grows out of the earth. That is why there was a fourth day, and then God said: ‚Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven.’ ” – Basil, Hexaëmeron 6:2;

Nobel Ashraf
Creation Day 4 (Genesis 1:14-19)
God creates all the stars and heavenly bodies. you didn’t know. sun is also a star lol. earth first day sun fourth day. unscientific﻿

Chris Carlascio
Still forgetting those capitals. Yes, the sun is also a star. You don’t need the sun to have day or night. You just need earth rotating in front of light. Light, without the sun, was created on the first day:

Genesis 1:3:
„And God said, ‚Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‚day,’ and the darkness he called ‚night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”

On the fourth day, this light was replaced with the newly created sun.

This unusual, counter-intuitive order of creation (light before sun) actually adds a hallmark of authenticity. If the Bible had been the product of later ‘editors’, as alleged by the Wellhausen school (‘Documentary Hypothesis’), they would surely have modified this to fit with their own understanding. Having ‘day’ without the sun would have been generally inconceivable to the ancients.

John Calvin wrote:
„Therefore the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and the moon.” – Calvin, J., Genesis, 1554; Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, UK, 1984, p. 76-77.

Concerning the creation of the sun, he writes:
„God had before created the light, but he now institutes a new order in nature, that the sun should be the dispenser of diurnal light, and the moon and the stars should shine by night. And he assigns them to this office, to teach us that all creatures are subject to his will, and execute what he enjoins upon them. For Moses relates nothing else than that God ordained certain instruments to diffuse through the earth, by reciprocal changes, that light which had been previously created. The only difference is this, that the light was before dispersed, but now proceeds from lucid bodies; which, in serving this purpose, obey the commands of God.” – Calvin, J., Genesis, 1554; Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, UK, 1984, p. 83.

Having the sun appear after the light would have been very significant to pagan worldviews which tended to worship the sun as the source of all life. God seems to be making it pointedly clear that the sun is secondary to Himself as the source of everything. He doesn’t ‘need’ the sun in order to create life, in contrast to old-Earth beliefs.

In fact, early church writers used the literal fourth day creation of the sun as a polemic against paganism. For example, in the second century, Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, wrote in an apologetic work to the learned pagan magistrate Autolycus:

„On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on earth come from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before the stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it.” – Theophilus, To Autolycus 2:15, AD 181, Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:100.

In the 4th century, Basil the Great commented on the same passage:
„Heaven and earth were the first; after them was created light; the day had been distinguished from the night, then had appeared the firmament and the dry element. The water had been gathered into the reservoir assigned to it, the earth displayed its productions, it had caused many kinds of herbs to germinate and it was adorned with all kinds of plants. However, the sun and the moon did not yet exist, in order that those who live in ignorance of God may not consider the sun as the origin and the father of light, or as the maker of all that grows out of the earth. That is why there was a fourth day, and then God said: ‚Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven.’ ” – Basil, Hexaëmeron 6:2;

Nobel Ashraf
Original Bible is in Hebrew and Aramaic. Them translated in Greek. There are no capital letters in any of those languages. Your understanding is limited. Go study!.﻿

Chris Carlascio
I’m talking about you (not the Bible) not capitalizing the first word of your English sentences. I see you figured it out though. That’s good.

Nobel Ashraf
yup see. there is the brain washing talking. i’m talking about science and you r harping over my typos. pathetic. so be it. stay brain washed zombie with illogical arguments without proof. i’m done talking to an idiot. laterz dumb ass.﻿

Genetic data show mainly men migrated from the Pontic steppe to Europe 5,000 years ag

firemonkey said:
02-21-2017 10:36 PM
A new study, looking at the sex-specifically inherited X chromosome of prehistoric human remains, shows that hardly any women took part in the extensive migration from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe approximately 5,000 years ago. The great migration that brought farming practices to Europe 4,000 years earlier, on the other hand, consisted of both women and men. The difference in sex bias suggests that different social and cultural processes drove the two migrations.

Genetic data suggest that modern European ancestry represents a mosaic of ancestral contributions from multiple waves of prehistoric migration events. Recent studies of genomic variation in prehistoric human remains have demonstrated that two mass migration events are particularly important to understanding European prehistory: the Neolithic spread of agriculture from Anatolia starting around 9,000 years ago, and migration from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe around 5,000 years ago. These migrations are coincident with large social, cultural, and linguistic changes, and each has been inferred to have replaced more than half of the contemporaneous gene pool of resident Central Europeans.

Dramatic events in human prehistory can be investigated using patterns of genetic variation among the people that lived in those times. In particular, studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide information about complexities of social structures and cultural interactions in prehistoric populations.

Researchers from Uppsala and Stanford University investigated the genetic ancestry on the sex-specifically inherited X chromosome and the autosomes in 20 early Neolithic and 16 Late Neolithic/Bronze Age human remains. Contrary to previous hypotheses suggesting patrilocality (social system in which a family resides near the man’s parents) of many agricultural populations, they found no evidence of sex-biased admixture during the migration that spread farming across Europe during the early Neolithic.

For later migrations from the Pontic steppe during the early Bronze Age, however, we find a dramatic male bias. There are simply too few X-chromosomes from the migrants, which points to around ten migrating males for every migrating female, says Mattias Jakobsson, professor of Genetics at the Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University.

venustas said:
02-22-2017 02:39 AMI just want to point out a theory and see if it seems valid. The Corded Ware did not come from the Yamna the Corded Ware were actually descendants of the Dnieper–Donets who latter got replaced by the Yamna a separate group. Ukraine latter got conquered by an Indo-corded ware culture. The Dnieper-Donets and the Yamna were related however so this is why the data falsely suggests the corded ware are descendants of the Yamna. Both the Yamna and the Dnieper-Donets spoke Indo-European languages which are somewhere between 10,000 to 20,000 years old. At least on the male side no solid evidence supports any idea that the corded ware are descendants of the Yamna and that is a fact.

parasar said:
02-22-2017 03:38 AM
Quote Originally Posted by Gravetto-Danubian View PostWow. That’s revolutionary. Kind of like a Palaeolithic Continuity Theory, but on the steppe ?

Not that revolutionary if you look at Anthony’s prePIE:

„The foragers’ language might have been part of the broad language family from which Proto-Indo-European later emerged … The Bug-Dniester culture grew out of Mesolithic forager cultures that dwelt in the region since the end of the last Ice Age …”

Heber said:
02-22-2017 05:34 AM
Thousands of horsemen may have swept into Bronze Age Europe, transforming the local population
By Ann GibbonsFeb. 21, 2017 , 12:00 PM

Call it an ancient thousand man march. Early Bronze Age men from the vast grasslands of the Eurasian steppe swept into Europe on horseback about 5000 years ago—and may have left most women behind. This mostly male migration may have persisted for several generations, sending men into the arms of European women who interbred with them, and leaving a lasting impact on the genomes of living Europeans.

“It looks like males migrating in war, with horses and wagons,” says lead author and population geneticist Mattias Jakobsson of Uppsala University in Sweden.

Europeans are the descendants of at least three major migrations of prehistoric people. First, a group of hunter-gatherers arrived in Europe about 37,000 years ago. Then, farmers began migrating from Anatolia (a region including present-day Turkey) into Europe 9000 years ago, but they initially didn’t intermingle much with the local hunter-gatherers because they brought their own families with them. Finally, 5000 to 4800 years ago, nomadic herders known as the Yamnaya swept into Europe. They were an early Bronze Age culture that came from the grasslands, or steppes, of modern-day Russia and Ukraine, bringing with them metallurgy and animal herding skills and, possibly, Proto-Indo-European, the mysterious ancestral tongue from which all of today’s 400 Indo-European languages spring. They immediately interbred with local Europeans, who were descendants of both the farmers and hunter-gatherers. Within a few hundred years, the Yamnaya contributed to at least half of central Europeans’ genetic ancestry.

GailT said:
02-22-2017 02:55 PM
Quote Originally Posted by venustas (…)
This is a topic that I hope will be clarified by more archaeological data and ancient autosomal DNA. It is difficult to interpret the mtDNA data (because of the slow mutation rate and poor time resolution, and the lack of full sequences for ancient samples), but I’ve wondered if certain mtDNA subclades are associated with Corded Ware (U5a2a1 and U5a2b) and others with Yamna (certain subclades of U5a1). It might be difficult to map out the cultural history of eastern Europe and the Steppe in the Mesolithic if Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were small, highly mobile groups, but hopefully ancient autosomal DNA will show the relationships of different Neolithic / Bronze Age cultures as they began to expand into central and western Europe. For now, it seems like we are still theory rich and data poor but this could change in the next several years.

Jean M said:
02-22-2017 07:48 PM
Quote Originally Posted by venustas (…)
I think I know what you mean, but the theory perhaps needs a bit of work. The Dnieper-Donets I culture was of pottery-making foragers. They made the same sort of pottery that first arrived in Europe in the Samara region. We know that the people who made it in Samara carried the autosomal ANE component and they are linked to both R1a and R1b, either there or in descendant cultures. I am fully expecting Y-DNA R1a in Dnieper-Donets I. The Dnieper-Donets II culture seems to be the same people evolving into farmers. We now have an R1a sample from them.

PIE (the immediate parent of all Indo-European languages) is no older than 4000 BC. Naturally it did not come out of nothing. There was a Pre-PIE language, which we presume the pottery-making foragers spoke. The degree of contact between the various pockets of Pre-PIE speakers in the forest-steppe would determine whether any particular group picked up the latest linguistic innovations of its neighbour groups. Yamnaya was a different economy, which was more mobile and spread its cultural innovations across the steppe. So we can picture them spreading the linguistic innovations too, for example a word for ‚wheel’. So by the time people from the forest-steppe pockets started filtering north up the rivers, they would be speaking PIE, not pre-PIE.

storm said:
02-23-2017 07:29 PM
Quote Originally Posted by venustas (…)
This is close to what I think happened, although your dates for PIE are way too old. Some of the earliest corded pottery made in the steppes was in the Sredny Stog culture in the Donets basin. During an arid period c. 4300 BCE they migrated into the middle Dnieper basin and mixed with the local Dnieper-Donets II culture, forming the Dereivka culture.

Dereivka produced corded pottery that was very similar to the type that later became widespread during the Corded Ware culture. During the mid or late 4th millennium BCE, the people of Dereivka dispersed across the forest steppe, establishing the large horizon of Corded Ware cultures that stretched from central Europe to the Urals after mixing with some EEF people (probably either Cucuteni or Funnelbeaker).

Dereivka and Sredny Stog likely spoke dialects of PIE which originated in the Donets or middle Don basin c. 4500 BCE. The Repin culture emerged in the middle Don basin c. 3700 BCE from a genetically related group. The Repin became highly mobile and spread into the open steppe by 3300 BCE, becoming the Yamnaya.

Gravetto-Danubian said:
02-23-2017 10:03 PM
Quote Originally Posted by storm (…)
Good shematic although there is no such thing as „Sredni Stog culture” anymore (although it retains as a useful generic designator), but rather an assortment of groups like Skelya, Kvitanya, Mikhailovka, etc spanning the 4500-3300 space. Also, Repin does not appear to have expanded west much (few Repin pots are found; and distinctive burial positions), only East.

storm said:
02-24-2017 03:33 AM
Quote Originally Posted by Gravetto-Danubian (…)
Yeah I was mostly using Sredny Stog in a broad sense, it of course consisted of several subgroups that have a complex history. It can be difficult to keep up with the various names used for this complex when different scholars use different terms and definitions for the same groups and processes. Terms like „Sredny Stog”, „Skelya”, and „Suvorovo-Novodanilovka” all greatly overlap in time and space.

As for Repin, I think their most important role was the formation of the Yamnaya, and maybe also the Afanasevo culture. Western European IE and R1b-L51 could’ve migrated westward with the Yamnaya or from one of the other closely related groups in this area such as Mikhailovka, Kvityana, Kemi Oba, etc.

Gravetto-Danubian said:
02-24-2017 03:43 AM
Quote Originally Posted by storm (…)
Yes The interesting thing is- from what I understand- is that „early Yamnaya” (ie monuments which date form as early as 3300 BC was regionally more variable; and would include the Repinized groups east of the Dnieper, as well as the various above mentioned post-Stog groups to the west. After 2900 BC, there is a homogenisation of the Yamnaya horizon, and graves of eastern type overlay earlier western ones (in relation to Dnieper), but the Repin pottery features disappeared. It would be interesting to see what this means if they manage to sample every single river basin subgroup; as in, L51 could be from early western Yamnaya ? which then left for Silesia.